Animoto for Education – Free is good!

We’ve partnered with Animoto in the past, culminating in them giving free access to every DEN teacher during Teacher Appreciation Week. But now they’ve just gone over the top.

We’re pleased to announce a new service exclusively for teachers. Animoto for Education (http://education.animoto.com) gives teachers, grades K-12, unlimited access to the full range of Animoto’s services, both standard and premium, for free.

Can’t beat that, can you? For those of you that aren’t familiar with Animoto, it’s an incredibly easy way to make a sleek animated video out of your photo sets. The whole thing is set to music, so it feels almost like a music video. Checkout this Animoto created by the DEN in SL team featuring photos from their Halloween party!

So what does this mean for educators? For one thing, they can make as many videos as they like, and that’s the full length videos, not the short ones. You can upload your own music, add in voice overs, and import photos from Flickr, Facebook and other social sites. BUT the best part is that with Animoto for Education, you are allowed to give your students access and let them create their own videos.

One feature that they added fairly recently was offline Animotos. You could always email them out or embed them into your site, but now you can actually download them and watch them offline. If you really want to go crazy, for $5 bucks you can have them create a DVD quality video that you can download and burn, or for $20 they’ll send a DVD directly to you.

I’ve been using Animoto with my students for the past year. We incorporated projects with Animoto on my students’ mid-term and final exam. For the final exam in Grade 10, among many parts to the final, I had the students create a trailer for The Secret Life of Bees since there was none by June for an October release.Hollywood should purchase one of the trailers a truly gifted digital native made.

Animoto is a very flexible tool and has unlimited uses and a zero learning curve. Sign up and you are good to go. Great tool!!

I was already an ANIMOTO fanatic for my personal use. I have even become an Affiliate. I was ENTIRELY thrilled to see Animoto for Education. As a STAR Discovery Educator, seeing Lange Rougeux’s endorsement was a nice plus. I have created various Animoto vids that are all over the Web. I’m sooooo excited about my latest vid that I plan to use to introduce myself to students and parents for the new school year.

It’s important for our students to see their teacher as a person. Animoto makes Mrs. Waddell– Special Education Teacher ROCK!!

With MovieMaker and Photostory available at my school, I honestly never gave Animoto the time it deserved. Now that I have read your blog and viewed your sample videos, I understand the power of this Web 2.0 tool. Why did I wait? I am inspired to incorporate Animoto into my classroom this year. My Sport and Entertainment Management classes have a field trip to Hershey Giant Center and Hersheypark each May. I envision having groups of students take picture during the field trip and use Animoto as a way to present the field trip experience to those students unable to attend. Thanks for this tip!

While I have not yet had the opportunity to use this in my classroom, it looks like another great tool! It seems easy to use and it’s nice to have another program to use besides Photostory and Movie Maker. I want to expose my students to the growing technologies and this is just another way that I can do so!

I am excited to check out Animoto’s application for the iPhone. I recently just purchased the iPhone, and with all the apps that teachers can use on it, it justifies the money that I had spent. I just recently took pictures on my phone during a study trip, and wondered what to do with them next, besides putting them into PhotoStory. I am looking forward to learning about what Animoto can do with them!

I took a graduate course in digital storytelling last summer and loved it. My only wish was that I could find a tool that offered animation. Animoto appears to be the answer. I teach Communications/Public Speaking to 5th and 6th graders and I can imagine many possibilties with Animoto. I always have students do a final reflection on their experiences at the end of the year, especially on how their attitudes have changed regarding public speaking. It would be interesting to see what the students would create with Animoto.

I am thrilled to see that, as educators, we can use this for free. I think we are blocked at school, but knowing this is an amazing tool to use for students to create! It is exciting to see the examples and what you can do with it. I would love to do more with it and explore it so I can see the benefits in my classroom. Any suggestions for first time users?

I had briefly explored Animoto while taking a graduate course but didn’t have a chance to really use it to the extent I could have and then kind of forgot about it. After reading this blog and seeing the sample videos of what can be done, I will definitely revisit the site to become more familiar with it. I think it’s great that it is free for education.

As a music teacher, I give Animoto 2 thumbs way up! I was able to take a video file and audio file of a song my chorus sang, put in a few fun photos from throughout the chorus year, add a few “recruitment” sayings, and in just a few seconds had a recruitment video to send down to the elementary chorus students! The kids in chorus loved it. The elementary kids loved it. The other music teachers loved it. Perfect!

How exciting that Animoto is offering free accounts for educators! Previously, I used a personal account and just kept my videos short, now I will be able to make them as long as I like! Check out the “Case Study” examples on the educator account sign up page. It’s a great place to get ideas. http://animoto.com/education/case_studies